The Omaha Public Library had 7,966 program, outreach, and community engagement events with a total attendance of 274,070 in 2015. The total average attendance for all events was 34. If you break down total average attendance by audience, the results are 26 for adults, 11 for young adults and 65 for children. If you further break down the total average attendance by event type and audience, the numbers are smaller for adult programs and children’s programs and outreach. However, the numbers are larger for adult outreach and community engagement, all teen events, and children’s community engagement. More

Low-tech solutions (i.e. great portable facilitator kits with good quality supplies) proved to be the best for community conversations. Our initial assumption that most meetings would take place in the library was wrong. Although some meetings took place in the library, many were at non-library locations. We expect this trend to increase as we work with more community groups.

Since our initial assumption was discovered to be wrong early, we re-thought the technology budgeted for the grant. Money originally earmarked for smart boards and projectors to be installed in library meeting rooms was instead used to buy portable facilitator kits and good quality supplies for our 12 branches. These kits proved so invaluable that the library now budgets annually for facilitation supplies in our Community Services Budget. More